


Remember the Day I Set You Free

by SylvanWitch



Series: Ain't No Mountain High Enough [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 20:11:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12395346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: He didn’t want to give Tony up.  Hell, ten minutes ago, he’d gone toe to toe with Fury on that very point.  But all he’d won for himself now, he saw, was the freedom to make a bad or worse choice.





	Remember the Day I Set You Free

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this and all of the stories in the series are taken from Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough."

“Do you want to kiss it and make it better?  We could all look away.”

 

“Give it a rest, Barton,” Steve said, refraining from doing or saying anything more, though he wanted to help Tony up and offer him a shoulder to lean on as he limped off the mat to where his towel and water bottle waited on the bench. 

 

It was the third time in as many sparring matches that Barton had gotten the better of Tony, and Steve could tell that Tony had long passed the limit of his patience where Barton’s sense of “humor” was concerned. 

 

Steve knew that Tony was keeping his cool only because he and Steve had made a pact about not letting their relationship alter team dynamics.  He appreciated Tony’s hard-fought control even as he struggled himself to keep from knocking Barton on his ass. 

 

There’d been sharper edges to Barton’s jibes since the big reveal, and Steve was starting to regret having told the team at all.

 

A gratifying thwacking sound alerted him to the fact that Natasha had smacked Barton.  He chose to ignore Barton’s exaggerated protest at the abuse and instead called Natasha to the mat for a round with him.

 

“You sure loverboy’s not gonna get jealous?”

 

Barton was relentless, and Steve felt his control slipping.  He clenched his hands into fists and shifted his weight in preparation for confronting him.

 

“I’m not the one who’s behaving like a jealous bitch,” Tony noted in that arch, catty tone he’d probably perfected while still in diapers.   His superciliousness was belied by the blood he was wiping from the corner of his mouth.   Barton’s last jab had struck him in the mouth-guard, an illegal but also effective move.

 

Steve took a long-suffering breath in through his nose.  _Here we go_.

 

“Jealous?  Don’t flatter yourself.  Either of you.”

 

Tony shook his head, his expression of faux pity as grating as the words that accompanied it.  “It’s a shame you hate yourself so much, Barton.  But, in fact, I wasn’t talking about your sexual, ah, proclivities.  I meant you’re jealous that you’re not getting all of Steve’s attention like you used to—as weakest guy on the team.”

 

Barton had crossed the floor in three strides and was glaring down at Tony, who hadn’t changed his position one millimeter as Barton charged toward him.  His smirk, however, had taken on several meters worth of snark.

 

Steve was just considering whether or not to break it up when Natasha said, “Knock it off!”

 

The last part of her warning was drowned out by the claxon signaling their need to assemble.

 

“Guess we’ll have to take a raincheck on the ape-like posturing and frustrated aggression,” Tony noted, rising gracefully and giving Barton a challenging smirk until Barton stepped out of his way and stomped off toward the locker-room.

 

Natasha shot Tony a cold look before she followed her partner out of the gym.

 

“What?” Tony asked, feigning innocence.  He still had blood on his chin, and his lower lip was swelling drastically.  Soon enough, he wouldn’t be able to talk without lisping.

 

Steve resisted the urge to wipe the blood away or drop a butterfly kiss on the wound.

 

“Clean up and get to the mission room.”

 

“Sir, yessir,” Tony drawled, blinking slowly and letting some heat into his eyes.

 

“Save it, Tony.  You fucked up,” Steve added as he passed his lover and headed for his own locker, regretting again—this time more strongly—that he’d ever urged them to go public.

 

 _Be careful what you wish for_ had never seemed an apter platitude.

 

What followed was the tensest Avengers mission briefing in the history of the team, and that included the time they got Coulson killed.

 

After the third time Fury had to remind one of them to pay attention—once Barton, who was shooting Tony with an invisible, miniature slingshot; once Tony, who was making a suggestive gesture at Barton involving his tongue and two fingers; and once, particularly annoyingly, Steve himself, who was glaring at the two children in the room, trying to get them back on task—Fury cut the briefing short and said, “Captain, my office in twenty.”

 

Given that Fury’s office was currently a mile and change up and somewhere over Maryland, this was the equivalent of telling Steve to drop and give him a thousand.

 

He made it, but just barely, thanks in large part to Nat’s excellent piloting and to Bruce having physically discouraged Tony and Barton from following them onto the Quinjet by letting a hint of green into his eyes and smiling in a way that made even Steve a little watery in the knees.

 

“You have a choice to make, Captain.” 

 

Fury didn’t bother elaborating.  Steve already knew what he was talking about.

 

The director managed to sound intimidating even though he was sitting in his chair, one booted foot against the edge of his post-modern nightmare of a desk.  A single unforgiving desk lamp cast harsh white light over his craggy face, plunging his covered eye into even deeper shadow.

 

If Tony were there, he’d make a comment about the lighting crew earning an Emmy for dramatic atmosphere or something like it.

 

Thinking of Tony made Steve feel simultaneously a little better and a lot worse.

 

Their relationship was like that.

 

Steve, who was standing at parade rest and staring into the middle distance at an unremarkable spot on the bulkhead above and behind Fury’s implacable, Cyclopean gaze, let none of his feelings into his face.

 

One of the only good things to come of Barton’s increasingly childish challenges to his authority was that Steve had developed a better poker face.  Tony had, of course, been proud.  Steve himself was a little sad about it.

 

“You can keep fucking Stark and lose the team, or you can dump him and get on with things.  I don’t have to tell you, _Captain_ , which is the better choice for the world.”

 

Fury might have been reminding Steve of his loyalties with the emphasis on his title, but it only served to make Steve angry.  He’d sacrificed enough for the US Army and this country and the world, he thought.  He deserved to have one thing that made him happy…most of the time.

 

A lot of the time.

 

Sometimes.

 

 _That_ he must have let show because Fury’s foot dropped to the floor with an ominous, dull thud, and he sat forward in his chair.  It brought his glittering, predator’s eye into sharper focus.

 

“This look like the Love Boat to you, Rogers?”

 

The specific reference was, as usual, lost on Steve, but he got the gist. 

 

“A good man—my _friend_ —died not three hundred yards from here so that you assholes would get your shit together and save the goddamned world.  And now you think, what?  It’s all okay?  Just because there’s not a fucking vortex swirling in the skies over Manhattan doesn’t mean the next hellstorm isn’t about to rain down on your lovesick candy asses.  So what the fuck are you going to do about it, Cap, huh?  You gonna tell the world to go fuck itself, get yourself a little cottage in the country, maybe adopt a couple of rescue dogs?”

 

By the time Fury finished, Steve had dropped his gaze and was staring hard at the director’s furious glare, holding it, face a careful, neutral mask, giving nothing away.

 

Fury threw up his hands in mock surrender and rocked back in his chair.

 

“So that’s how it’s going to be, huh?  Man, Tony Stark must be one sweet piece of ass…”

But Fury had miscalculated on that.  On a good day, Tony bragged about his impressive libido and staying power.  On a bad day, he ran himself down for being a “slut.”  It wasn’t anything Steve hadn’t heard before out of Tony’s own mouth.

 

Fury’s disrespect was distasteful—beneath him—but it wasn’t enough to bring Steve over the desk at him.

 

He bided his time, gaze unwavering.

 

Fury slipped into what he must have thought was a softer expression.

 

“Jesus, you _love_ him, don’t you? You poor sap.  Look,” and he held his hands up like he was offering reconciliation.  “I know it’s hard.  But you’ve got a choice to make:  Your country or your boyfriend.  There’s not a lot of wiggle room on this one, Captain.  I have bosses too.”

 

This got Steve’s attention.

 

“What’s the WSC got to do with who I date?”

 

Fury shrugged elaborately, putting on a don’t-ask-me-I’m-just-the-day-help smile.  “You don’t think they’re going to hear that the Avengers were forced to stand down on a mission?  You don’t think I’m going to be answering a conference call within the hour?  C’mon, Cap, I know you haven’t been around for a while, but things haven’t changed that much:  the powers that be always need appeasement.  So you’ve gotta give me something.”

 

But Steve wasn’t buying Fury’s aw-shucks-just-following-orders routine.

  
He shook his head once, sharply, and came out of parade rest to take a step toward Fury’s desk, close enough that Fury either had to crane his neck to keep Steve’s gaze or stand up.

 

He chose to stand.

 

Even standing, Fury still had to look up, and Steve waited until Fury’s eye was fixed on him, until the quiet between them had stretched into something tangible, something requiring acknowledgement.

 

“I work for the United States of America.  Right now, that means S.H.I.E.L.D.  And right now, S.H.I.E.L.D. means you.  If you want to report to the WSC about this situation, I can’t stop you.  If you want to relieve me of my command of the Avengers, that’s your prerogative too. 

 

I take responsibility for the strife in my team right now.  I’ve got a lot to learn where relationships are concerned—that’s not an excuse, it’s a statement of fact—but I’m a fast learner, Directory Fury.  What I’ve learned here today is that you don’t have the power to stop me from loving Tony or to change my mind about him either.

 

So you do what you need to, Director, and I’ll do the same.  At the end of the day, I’m pretty sure who’s going to be happier with his choice.”

 

Without waiting to be dismissed, Steve made a precise turn and strode from Fury’s office.

 

In the hangar bay, Steve returned the salute of two young, fresh-faced deck monkeys before climbing up the ramp into the Quinjet and strapping himself in next to Natasha.

 

“We good?”

 

She was asking about more than just whether or not they could lift off, and Steve found himself smiling at her, a smile that came with a long exhalation, as of a held breath.  He nodded.

 

“We’re good.”

 

She offered an uncertain nod in return and went through the pre-flight checklist.  When they were well clear of the Helicarrier’s ominous shadow, she asked, “Are we off the mission?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You still have a job?”

 

Steve smiled again.  He couldn’t help it.  The further they put the Helicarrier in the rearview, the closer he got to Tony, the lighter he felt.

 

“For now.”

 

Eventually, he explained the conversation with Fury.  By the time he got to the part about the WSC, Natasha’s mouth was a tight, bloodless line in her face.

 

After a considerable—and considerably tense—period of silence, Natasha said, “I know what Clint’s problem is.”

 

Steve waited, eyes on her profile, which radiated unhappiness from the set of her shoulders to lines around her eyes.

 

“He and Coulson were together.”

 

“Shit.”  Steve swore softly, under his breath, and shook his head, feeling an electric pang of sympathy shoot through him followed by a cascade of ice.  He’d almost lost Tony more than once since they’d started this thing they had together, so it didn’t take much imagination to get a sense of what Barton was going through.

 

“So when he sees Tony and me together…”  Steve said at last.

 

“He’s jealous of what you have, yeah,” she confirmed, her voice rising at the end.

“But?”

 

Natasha’s face was tight with anger and grief.

 

“He also knows how dangerous it is.  To us.  To me.  To you.”

 

“I’m not going to put Tony’s safety before what’s best for the team, Nat.”

 

“Really?”  There was nothing accusatory in her question.  She wasn’t trying to make him feel guilty.  She was asking it sincerely, pushing him to consider the missions they’d already had since he and Tony had been together.

 

That time when they’d fought the tentacle monster and Tony had been hurt—so had Natasha, when Steve had gotten distracted.

 

The mission two months ago when they’d had to defuse a series of increasingly complicated explosive devices a mad activist had rigged around the city and Steve had had to cut comms in order to focus on the bomb he had in front of him rather than on Tony’s running monologue from where he and Bruce were trying to defuse the most complicated and potentially devastating of the four.

 

Last week, when Tony had gotten burned during a new weapons demonstration, and Steve had barked at the S.H.I.E.L.D. instructor about incompetence.

 

“Shit,” he swore again, more vehemently but no louder, half in recognition of her point, half in devastation at what it meant—what it _had_ to mean—if they were going to remain a team.

 

“Yeah,” Natasha answered, taking a hand off the yoke long enough to squeeze Steve’s hand where he had it clenched in a white-knuckled fist against his thigh.

 

He didn’t want to give Tony up.  Hell, ten minutes ago, he’d gone toe to toe with Fury on that very point.  But all he’d won for himself now, he saw, was the freedom to make a bad or worse choice.

 

Fury could relieve him of command or kick him off the team if he didn’t like the direction things were headed.  The WSC could demand new leadership of the Avengers.  But it was ultimately up to Steve to make this particular choice:  The team or Tony.

 

When it had been a point of principle—Steve’s free will versus the will of a shadier-than-thou government agency—he’d had it all figured out.

 

But now that it was a point of practicality—more than that, of the safety of his teammates and friends—well, that wasn’t theoretical at all.  He’d put them in harm’s way because he loved Tony Stark.  Looked at in the cold, clear light of this new understanding, Steve was suddenly ashamed—not of his love, not of Tony, but of himself for having let the team down.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

 

“I’m not the only one who needs to hear it.”

 

“I know.”

 

And still he was talking around it.  He wasn’t saying what they were both thinking. 

 

His throat was tight with it, his heart pounding furiously against his ribs.  His trim nails were carving half-moons in the meat of his hands, and he was shaking, a steady, subtle tremor made of anger and anguish.

 

He’d been lonely for so long.  Surely, he should be allowed to have this one solace, this one person against whose fragile heart he could rest the weight of his own.  Shouldn’t all of his sacrifices have counted for this, at least?

 

When Steve at last took a deep breath, it felt like he was inhaling shattered glass.  He coughed to clear his throat and blinked furiously to clear his eyes.  With a conscious effort, he unclenched his hands and let go of the iron tension across his back.

 

“Give us tonight?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“Thanks, Nat.”

 

She nodded, eyes on the landing pad, hands moving deftly over the controls, the consummate professional as she announced their arrival and ran through the post-flight checklist.

 

“Steve?” she called quietly as the rear hatch opened and he strode toward the illusion of freedom it provided.

 

He half-turned, unable to look her full in the face, doing everything he could to appear as though he hadn’t taken his heart out of his chest and put half of it away in a vault to which he had never known the combination.

 

“I’m sorry too.”

 

It was his turn to nod, which he did, though it felt like his neck had been mechanized, all faulty, rusting pistons and gears that didn’t turn smoothly.

 

Then he was walking down the corridor toward Tony’s private quarters, trying to get the sorrow off of his face.  He couldn’t mourn what he hadn’t killed yet.  He owed Tony more than to bury them both alive with this thing.

 

Tony was distracted when Steve walked in, which gave him a twinge of cowardly relief; he could take a deep breath here and slip into the familiar frenetic space that Tony made around him when he was riffing on a new idea.

 

In this case, Steve was able to make out that it was something about a better gyroscopic geosynchronous something-or-other and that it was making Tony bop and judder with that unique blend of machismo and genius that it had taken Steve a while to appreciate but that now he wouldn’t want to live without.

 

He crushed that thought ruthlessly and smiled as Tony said, “Oh, hey, do we have a mission?  And are you speaking to me again?”

 

Tony jived on high tech dreams was about as beautiful as he ever got—there was a flush high on both cheeks and a radiance in his face, a vibration in the way he moved, his hands making invisible art in the air.

 

Steve paused maybe longer than he should’ve, bringing Tony closer, a muttered, “Shit, what now?” before Steve shook his head and smiled and said, “Fury gave the mission to another team.  And yes, of course I’m speaking to you.  C’mere.”

 

Tony was almost never reluctant for touch, but he hesitated, hanging there a few inches from Steve’s outstretched hand, torn between his need to get to the lab and his hunger to be with Steve.

 

“C’mere,” Steve said more quietly, curling his fingers, and Tony huffed out an impatient breath, throwing his eyes into an epic roll before curling into the curve of Steve’s reeling arm and laying his lips in a sucking kiss against the base of Steve’s throat.

 

The suddenness of it—the heat and the wetness—punched a startled moan out of him, which became something else when Tony snaked a hand down the front of his pants and cupped him through his boxers.

 

“Shower,” Steve suggested, ghosting a kiss across Tony’s sweaty temple, where the tangle of his hair smelled of excitement and hydraulic fluid.

 

Tony squeezed him once, purposefully, and Steve groaned again and stepped back, already reaching for the hem of his shirt to strip himself as efficiently as the US Army had made him capable of.

 

Tony took a little longer, giving Steve long, insouciant looks as he skimmed his greasy tank over his head and shimmied his workout pants over his hips and down, letting them pool around his long, bare feet before stepping out of them.

 

He was naked underneath, and he gave Steve a slow, wolfish smile, all teeth and hungry intent, before sashaying past him to the en suite bathroom.

 

It was a good shower, and if Steve hadn’t been a super soldier, it might have been his only orgasm of the night—Tony had a very talented mouth and a truly prodigious manual dexterity—but as it was, Steve had other plans for them, and as he dried Tony off, he slowed things down, taking the time to touch Tony everywhere, light, exploratory touches and firm, deliberate caresses and the kind in between that sometimes brushed a nervous laugh out of Tony at the tenderness and the focus.

 

Right now, Steve was tracing the outline of the arc reactor, eyes on Tony’s, fingertips as gentle as a summer breeze.

 

Tony’s breath was coming in short, harsh bursts and his kiss-bruised lips were open and wet.  His eyes were unfocused, chasing the next wave of pleasure, as Steve guided him back toward the bed in the other room.

 

They had had sex in all kinds of ways in the months they’d been together, but Steve could count on a single hand the number of times they’d made love, the slow, essential kind that was about heart more than hard-ons.  It wasn’t that he disliked all the other ways they came together—and _came_ together:  Steve was a red-blooded, all-American guy who enjoyed even the most athletic of their sexual adventures.

 

But when they took their time about it, when there were shared breaths and true words whispered against the secret places of their bodies, when being there together in the moment, looking one another in the eye, really seeing each other was what mattered, the moments that made his heart bend almost to breaking for the wonder and the fear and the love he felt, for the impossible, unmistakable thrill of the most dangerous of all risks—those were the moments he wanted to hold onto forever, that he wanted to take down into his final rest.

 

Steve felt it now, that love, his heart creasing, his breath struggling in his chest, a fierce, infinite cry he could never release as Tony let all of him in, joined in heat and passion and joy, the glory of Tony’s eyes wide and glistening, fastened to Steve’s gaze like it was what helped him remember to breathe.

 

“God, Tony, God I love you, I love you, I love you,” Steve chanted, punctuating each reiteration with a gentle push, deeper and deeper, until his voice broke and Tony reached up a shaking hand to trace the line that the tears he didn’t know he was shedding made down his face.

 

They came together, no outcry, just a sudden stillness, a jaw-clenching, throat-baring, finger-clutching mutual obliteration.

 

When the thunder of blood in his ears finally abated and his breath slowed, Steve opened his eyes to see Tony looking right at him with a sad knowing in his face that drove an aborted sound of denial out of Steve.

 

He bit off the lie he would have told, shook his head, and started to pull away, but Tony stopped him with a hand on his chest, right over Steve’s heart.

 

“I know this was a goodbye fuck.  It’s okay.  I understand.”

 

“It’s not okay.  And we both know it wasn’t a fuck,” Steve managed, the words choking him.  He tried to pull away again, and this time Tony let him, let Steve move to the side of the bed and hang his legs over, let him slump there, defeated, head hanging.

 

Tony’s hand was hot where the sweat was already cooling in the small of Steve’s back, and he almost told Tony _no, don’t_ , but he wanted it, God help him, he wanted whatever he could get of this last night with Tony.  He knew it was selfish, but even as he loathed his weakness he craved more touch and more time.

 

“Are you leaving?”  Tony didn’t say _me_ , but it was there anyway, a damning phantom pointing its cold finger at Steve’s dying heart.

 

Steve nodded without looking at Tony, who had moved up to wrap an arm around his chest and press against his damp back.  He could feel the null space of the arc reactor against his spine, and he had an insane momentary wish that it would burst and burn them both to ashes. 

 

Then he took in a breath that sounded harsh in the stillness of the room.  It was a mistake. The scent of them was still heavy in the air, the mingled odors of sweat and sex, of hot skin and salt and the suggestion of soap, shampoo, and aftershave—all of it achingly familiar and no longer his to have.

 

He made an animal sound that shamed him and wrenched away from Tony, up off the bed and halfway to the bathroom, something huge in his throat that he couldn’t swallow around and his heart pummeling itself against the cage of his ribs.

 

“I can’t stay,” he said at last, bracing himself in the doorway, hands clenching the frame hard enough that the wood creaked in protest.  “I can’t lead this team with you on it, and it’s your team, really, Tony.  Hell,” he added with a weak, unfunny laugh, “It’s your tower.”

 

“You’re the First Avenger, Cap.  They’ll always be _your_ team.”

 

At this, Steve turned to face Tony, who was only ten feet away but might as well have been on another planet for the vast distance Steve’s words had put between them.

 

“I can’t lead them and love you, Tony.  Eventually, it’ll kill one of them.  Or you.”

 

“Or you,” Tony noted, something hard in his voice.

 

Steve shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him, and right now, it really didn’t.  If a beam of annihilating light came through the penthouse window and struck him in the heart, it couldn’t feel worse than he did right now.

 

He shook his head and snorted disdainfully, hating himself.  He was supposed to be stronger than this.

“Any one of us could die tomorrow, Steve.  We could die with or without you, but I’m telling you as the resident genius, here, the stats for us are much better with you than without.  You’re Captain Fucking America.”

 

“You’re all heroes, Tony.”

 

“Okay,” he answered, though it didn’t sound like a concession.  “Consider that if you go, there’s nothing left to keep us here.  Natasha and Barton will return to S.H.I.E.L.D.  Bruce will disappear into the Himalayas to commune with the holy Yeti.  Thor is only a pinch hitter as it is.”

 

Tony put his hands out:  _Whaddya gonna do?_  

 

“So it’ll be like the old days for me—tinkering in the lab, fending off murderous rivals, drinking myself into fabulousness, occasionally bagging triplets, and getting my name in all the tabloids.  You can’t go, Steve. Who’ll save me from myself?”

 

Tony tried to play it off as a joke, one of his usual self-deprecating, bitter-as-bottom-shelf-gin kind of jibes, but Steve heard behind it the little boy who’d been serially abandoned by people who were supposed to love him, who’d had a string of empty liquor bottles and emptier sexual encounters to replace what he’d never felt worthy of having in the first place. 

 

Who’d trusted Steve with everything he had and was standing there now in front of him asking in so many words not to be left again.

 

“Some hero,” Steve muttered to himself, but of course, Tony heard him.

 

“Hey, self-loathing is my trademark.  Get your own.  My lawyers have enough work without you adding to it.”

 

Steve shook his head, the low thrum of blood in his ears making him dizzy, the tightness in his chest threatening to suffocate him.  He wanted to tear the world apart or go cry in a corner, curled up small enough that no one would ever see him.

 

“I survived the super soldier serum.  I made it through World War II.  I lost Bucky.  I outlived everyone I’d ever known or loved.  But I can’t seem to make it without you, Tony.  And I don’t know what to do.”

 

He sounded pathetic to his own ears, but Tony didn’t seem to think so.  His characteristic saturnine smirk slipped into something real and gentle, an expression he seemed to save for Steve.

 

Tony crossed the floor, his bare feet silent on the thick nap of the rug, his belly streaked with drying come, a love-mark blossoming on his throat and his lips swollen and red.  He was the most beautiful person Steve had ever seen, and he clenched his fists when he remembered that he shouldn’t reach out to him again, that this was supposed to be the end.

Tony got right up in Steve’s space, close enough that Steve could feel the heat of his body, though they weren’t touching. When Tony said, “I love you,” Steve felt the warmth of Tony’s words on his own lips, and he licked them involuntarily and groaned, a desperate, wounded sound, before ducking his head to close the space between them and kiss Tony.

 

They didn’t touch anywhere else, only here at their closed lips, firm and warm and somehow chaste, not deepening into passion but the kind of kiss that sealed a promise, the kind that deserved an altar and formal declarations and an audience of their favorite people watching it.

 

When Tony broke it off, he didn’t back up, and Steve felt his words as much as heard them, a lump growing in his throat.

 

“I’m not letting you give up the team.  I’m not letting you walk away.  Where you go, I follow.  You want the world to go fuck itself, I’m with you.  You want to stay and figure this out, I’m here too.  Loving each other means we decide this shit together.  It means you don’t have to do the hard things alone.  You’re not the only damned hero in this relationship, you know?”

 

Steve had to close his eyes and swallow hard before he could look at Tony, and when he did, the love he saw there undid all his effort.  He shook his head, unable to answer except to reach out and draw Tony in, wrapping his arms around him, holding on like the world was shifting under their feet.

 

He buried his nose in the space behind Tony’s ear and took in a long breath that came out in a shaky sound, half laugh, half sob.  “Why can’t I leave you?” 

 

“I’d make a _Brokeback Mountain_ joke right now, but it’d just go over your head,” Tony said after a while, the words muffled a little by Steve tightening his embrace before letting go.

 

“What are we going to tell Natasha and the rest of the team?”  Despite Tony’s declaration, they still had a serious problem on their hands.  Steve was long past the days when he believed that love alone could save anyone. 

 

“We’ll figure it out tomorrow,” Tony said in a surprisingly forthright, practical tone, the kind Steve was used to hearing from Ms. Potts.  “For now, let’s take another shower and get some sleep, okay?”

 

And then Tony stepped around him, hooked a warm, firm hand through his own, and led him into the bathroom; into the shower beneath the hot, purifying spray; into the future, which for now was the few hours they had before dawn broke open the world and exposed them again to what they feared and had to fight against.

 

Steve had had enough desperate, dark nights in his life to know when he had it good, so he took it, telling his brain to sit down and shut up, letting his body lead him and his mighty heart. 

 

It would be enough for now.  It had to be.


End file.
